A conventional broadcast program distribution system records contents data of broadcast programs in a video server (a recording apparatus) in advance, reproduces the relevant contents data according to an instruction from an broadcast program distribution controller (APC), and broadcasts the reproduced contents data (e.g., Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. H11-316655).
At this time, to comply with a broadcast request reliably, a live system video server and a backup system video server are operated in parallel and the output of the live system video server is used for broadcasting, whereas the output of the backup system video server is configured to replace that of the live system video server if the live system one should malfunction.
In addition, the conventional broadcast program distribution system records contents data of broadcast programs in a video server functioning as a recording apparatus and then confirms whether there is a error by previewing the recorded contents data.
The above method, however, needs a large-scale apparatus to make contents data redundant at the sacrifice of storage resources. Moreover, an error may occur in contents data recorded in a storage when the data is encoded. It has been strongly hoped that only valid contents data with no error will be recorded in the storage. The error, however, cannot be detected until contents data is decoded.
There is a method of performing error detection in a recording stage by use of a codec. Some contents data recorded in storage requires continuity as MPEG2 Open Group of Pictures (GOP) does. The method of using a codec cannot cope with data that requires continuity, such as MPEG2 Open GOP.